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Re: Interpretation
Posted By: Sam, on host 24.61.194.240
Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 10:07:09
In Reply To: Re: Interpretation posted by wintermute on Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 09:12:31:

> The dead Sea has been filled since long before the 2nd Century.

The second after I posted, I ran across this factoid I had recorded in some notes concerning the Dead Sea: The Bible calls it the "Salt Sea" and Josephus called it "Lake Asphaltitis."

If Josephus called it *anything*, obviously it had to *be* there in his time, in the first century A.D. Yet Josephus also said one could verify that Lot's wife was still there, and, as a respected historian, if he had been wrong about that, he would have been discredited. So something is clearly amiss.

In rereading the biblical text, God told Lot and his wife to flee to a *mountain* (Gen. 19:17), because he was going to destroy not just the city but the whole plain. Genesis 19:25-26 says that God overthrew the city and the plain, and *then* Lot's wife looked back. So they had to have been out of the plain and on the mountain by that point, and that means that the biblical account, as well as the geological account and Josephus's writings, make it doubtful that Lot's wife would now be submerged in the Dead Sea.

So what you say here makes sense. I appear to be wrong in assuming Lot's wife is now submerged, as neither the biblical account nor Josephus's account would support that.

So I take that part back and thank you for bringing it up. What *did* happen to Lot's wife, I don't know: anything can happen in 1800 years.

Of course, that still leaves the fact that Josephus and the Bishop of Lyons were telling people to go down and look at her if they wanted verification of the story, which is the main thing I was trying to get across.

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